A House Is Not A Home
by ggace
Summary: AU. Callie and Jude had been living with the Olmsteads for almost two years. Everything changed with one phone call to the police.


Author's Note: Warning: the first two chapters have mild sexual content and violence.

Callie Jacob didn't like cops.

Her first experience with them was when they informed her that her mom was dead. She was ten. Needless to say, it was not a good experience. And it only went downhill from there.

Her first foster father hit her. He was just the first of many, but she didn't know that at the time. She called the police, who believed her foster father when he said she was lying. That was the last time Callie had expected cops to help her.

It had been four and a half years since her mom died in a car accident, her dad was arrested, and she and Jude were taken to their first foster home. They'd been in five different foster homes in that time. Their social worker, Bill, said they never stayed in a foster home for longer than six months because something bad always seemed to happen. They'd been living with the Olmsteads for almost two years.

It was their longest lasting placement yet, and it was one of the better foster homes they'd been in. Mr. and Mrs. Olmstead were nice enough. Callie and Jude had chores, not the long list of chores that foster parents who thought their foster kids lived to serve as live-in maids gave them, but normal chores like taking out the trash and doing the dishes. They had their own rooms and three meals a day.

Callie should have known it wouldn't last.

Everything changed on a restless summer night. One phone call from Jude was the catalyst for change. Two sharp raps on the front door of the Olmstead's two-story house signaled the beginning of the end for Callie and Jude.

"Open up! Police!"

Anyone else in Callie's current position, which was in her room, on her bed, pinned under her foster brother, would have been relieved. Callie wasn't.

Liam's handsome features contorted in rage. "You called the cops?"

Callie stared at him incredulously. "No, I didn't call them. When would I have called them? I've been here, with you, all night." She didn't think she needed to remind him of that.

Liam got off the bed and zipped his jeans. "Stay here."

"Liam, I think I should-"

He never heard what it was that she thought she should do. Two uniformed cops, a solidly built man with black hair and a tall, thin woman with blonde hair in a ponytail, burst through Callie's doorway, weapons drawn. Callie cut her brown eyes, wide with fear and shock, to them. Liam swore.

"Police! Hands up!"

"You can't just come in." Liam's voice may have lacked some of his usual confidence, but he didn't put his hands in the air.

Stef Adams Foster scanned the room with a well-trained eye. When they entered the bedroom, the young teenaged girl had been lying flat on her back on the bed. She was sitting up now, pulling the sheet up to cover her. Her wrists were red where Liam had held them in place and the red contrasted startlingly with her otherwise pale skin. Her dark brown hair was tousled and her eyes were unbearably sad and tired. She'd been crying, but she wasn't now. She was quivering like a baby bird. The half-naked boy was tall with an athletic build. He could easily overpower the girl – and had by the look of things.

"Liam Olmstead? Your foster brother let us in," Stef said in a professional tone that didn't match the fire in her eyes. "Put your hands up now."

"Jude?" Her baby brother's name came from Callie's mouth in a strangled gasp. He was supposed to be spending the night at a friend's house. What was he doing there? God, how much did he hear? Did he hear her beg Liam to stop?

"Callie?" Jude said from the doorway.

"Stay back, son," Mike said, glancing over his shoulder at Jude.

"Baby, what are you doing here? You were supposed to spend the night at Tyler's house." Callie's voice was higher than normal.

Jude shrugged. "I came home early. I heard you crying. The door was open. I saw him. He was hurting you." His voice hardened with the accusation. He faltered when he saw the panic-stricken look on his sister's face. "Wasn't he?"

"You don't know what you saw. You're eleven." Liam rolled his eyes and smiled at Mike, as if to say _kids_. He could be very charismatic when he wanted to be. He had charmed Callie, after all, and she considered herself a good judge of character.

"Callie?" Jude said uncertainly.

Callie ran a shaky hand through her tangled hair and was surprised to feel a knot on the back of her head where it had hit the headboard when Liam pushed her back on the bed. She brought her hand down to her lap, palm up, and looked at it. There was no blood. There were no bruises. There was no evidence that she wasn't willing.

It was going to be her word against Liam's, and her word wasn't worth very much. She was a trashy foster kid, and Liam was the perfect clean-cut, All American boy. They both knew who the cops would believe. Jude was the only one who didn't.

This would go in Callie's case-file. She would be labeled sexually volatile. No one would foster her again. She would go to a girls' home. She and Jude would be separated. Her heart dropped down to her stomach in a free fall.

"Jude, what did you do?" Callie said, panic bubbling up over her usual composed surface.

Jude frowned. "I called the police."

"You did the right thing," Mike told him.

Liam looked surprised that he didn't have Mike completely fooled, but recovered quickly, looking at Callie expectantly, his eyes gleaming. "Tell them I wasn't hurting you."

The cops hadn't believed her when she was ten and her foster father hit her. They wouldn't believe her now.

"He wasn't," Callie began quietly, the lie sticking in her throat like every letter had a jagged edge.

Liam's lips curved ever so slightly with triumphant satisfaction. He knew exactly what he did to her and now…now he knew he would get away with it. She didn't want to give him that satisfaction.

Jude's face fell, the disappointment he felt showing in his eyes. That was when Callie realized that even if the cops didn't believe her, Jude would believe her.

Liam and Callie both knew what he did to her and Jude would believe her, so who really cared what the cops thought?

"I mean…he didn't hit me or anything, but he…" Callie stopped, taking a deep breath. She couldn't start crying again now. If she did, she would never stop. She steeled herself. "Uh…he forced me to have sex with him."

For the first time since Callie had known him, Liam looked scared. _Good_.

"Okay, we had sex, but she wanted it. She came onto me," Liam said defensively, turning it around on her like the master manipulator he was.

"You're lying!" Jude said fervently. "I heard her."

"I didn't." Callie's voice cracked traitorously with suppressed emotion. "I didn't want it. I told him I wasn't ready."

"How old are you?" Mike asked suddenly.

"Um…fifteen?" Callie's brow was furrowed; she was unable to comprehend why her age mattered.

"And you're, what, eighteen?" Mike said, sizing Liam up.

"Nineteen," Liam mumbled.

"If you had sex with her, it's statutory rape," Mike said. He read Liam his rights and led him out of the room in handcuffs. It was hard to say who was more shocked by this turn of events, Liam or Callie.

"Are you hurt?" Stef asked Callie, scanning her for injuries.

"Uh, not- not really," Callie said. She was sore, but she wasn't hurt, not physically.

Stef didn't look like she quite believed her.

"We need to go to the hospital. Get dressed, please." The please did little to soften the quiet authority in Stef's voice.

"Go pack your stuff, bud." Callie said to Jude, who was still standing there, looking lost, like he didn't know what to do now.

Jude took a step toward the door and then stopped, looking over his shoulder at Callie. "Should I call Bill?"

"Who's Bill?" Stef asked curiously.

"Our social worker," Callie said tersely.

"We'll call him when we get to the hospital," Stef said, taking charge of the situation.

Jude nodded and left the room quietly.

Callie reached for the tank top in the pile of clothes on the floor by her bed, but Stef stopped her, eyeing the torn panties on top of the pile.

"Uh, not those. Evidence," Stef said. She walked over to the closet and pulled out a black t-shirt and a pair of worn and faded jeans. "Here." She threw the clean clothes to Callie, who caught them. "Do you want me to leave?"

"Yeah," Callie said, an automatic response from years in the system that had conditioned her never to ask anyone for anything, never to rely on anyone. She was alone, even if she didn't want to be alone. She was alone.

Stef looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn't know what to say, how to comfort the girl she didn't know, so she stepped out into the hallway, closing Callie's door behind her.

From where she stood just outside Callie's door, Stef heard more officers arrive and exchange friendly greetings with Mike, and she knew he had called in reinforcements. They would take Liam down to the station and book him while she and Mike took Callie to the hospital. Soon a Crime Scene Investigation Unit would collect the clothes and bedding that they would need as evidence if this went to trial.

Jude came out of the room looking like he was on a mission. He didn't have his suitcase with him. He stopped suddenly when he saw Stef standing in front of Callie's room. "Where's Callie?"

"In her room, getting dressed," Stef said. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"No, that's okay," Jude mumbled.

Jude knocked on Callie's door and she opened it, wearing jeans and the black t-shirt Stef had picked out for her. A blue duffel bag was sitting on the floor by her closet.

"Should I pack the stuff they got me?" Jude asked her uncertainly. "I packed everything else."

Callie bit her bottom lip, torn between not wanting to owe the Olmsteads anything and knowing her brother deserved more than the bare minimum he had when they were placed with the Olmsteads.

The Olmsteads hadn't spent a fortune on either of them, but they did have new clothes that actually fit instead of clothes from the second-hand store and they both had received a Christmas present from their foster parents that year.

"Like what?" Callie said finally.

"I have some new clothes and a new backpack," Jude said.

"Pack it if you want it," Callie told him. She didn't want anything the Olmsteads had given her. She started fumbling with the clasp of the necklace she was wearing.

"What's that?" Jude asked, noticing the silver chain instead of their mom's gold necklace that Callie always wore.

"What?" Callie said absently. She was still trying to take the necklace off, ordering her trembling fingers to work the tiny clasp.

"That necklace," Jude said.

"Uh…Liam gave it to me," Callie said, cringing as Stef aimed her razor-sharp gaze on the pendant necklace with professional interest.

"What? Why?" Jude asked.

"It was a birthday present," Callie said, avoiding eye contact with Stef, who was listening intently to every word. She decided not to mention that it had been a late birthday present…late as in that very evening.

Liam only gave it to her when he got home from his summer job, working part time at a clothing store that was conveniently located at the mall where he got the necklace. What she thought was a thoughtful gesture now seemed contrived. She wondered if he'd known when he bought it that he was going to have sex with her that night. Was the necklace payment? She wanted it off of her, damn it. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking long enough for her to take it off. She hadn't stopped shaking violently since the cops showed up.

"Your birthday was Wednesday. You never tell anyone when your birthday is," Jude said doubtfully.

"Well, I told Liam." Callie turned away from Jude in frustration and dropped her hands. She couldn't get the damn necklace off anyway. "Go pack the rest of your stuff."

As Jude went back to his room, Stef moved behind Callie to help her take the necklace off.

Callie stiffened when Stef's hand brushed against the back of her neck to reach the tiny clasp. "Is that evidence, too?"

Stef froze for a split second, taken aback by the bite in the girl's tone. She raised her eyebrows from behind Callie's back. "No," she said, dropping the necklace into Callie's hand. "Should it be?"

Callie gave Stef one long, withering look and threw the necklace in the wastebasket next to her desk.

Stef thought her adopted daughter, Mariana, would be jealous of just how much irritation Callie could convey in one look.

Callie packed her shoes and clothes, taking only what she had when she came to the Olmsteads twenty-one months ago, which wasn't much.

"That everything?" Stef asked as Callie picked up her duffel bag. The closet still had some clothes in it.

Callie nodded, annoyance that Stef was treating her like a child who would forget something flitting briefly across her face.

Although Stef hadn't even been in the Olmstead's house for an hour and Callie and Jude had lived there for nearly two years, Stef led the way down the hallway to the stairs.

Callie stopped at the top of the stairs and grabbed Jude's arm. "Wait! Where's Liam?"

Stef turned around to look at Callie with pity in her eyes. The girl might act tough, but deep down she was just a scared kid, barely older than Stef's daughter. "He's at the station."

Callie let out a breath and nodded, letting go of Jude's arm. They walked down the stairs into the family room. The TV was still on and the menu of the DVD that Callie and Liam had been watching was up. There was a plastic bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, and the whole room smelled like popcorn. It felt like a lifetime ago that they were laughing and throwing popcorn at each other. Now, the memory made Callie feel nauseas.

Callie hurried past Mike, who had been waiting for the Crime Scene Investigation Unit in the entryway, outside into the fresh air. She took a couple of deep, cleansing breaths.

"Hey, you okay?" Mike asked, concern written all over his face.

"I just can't be in there anymore," Callie said, glancing back at the Olmstead's house, the first foster home that had ever felt like an actual home to Callie.

But it had never really been her home. It was just another foster home, no safer than the last. Callie had allowed herself to get too comfortable, let her guard down. She wouldn't do that again.


End file.
